Survivor's Guilt
by polyphonical
Summary: Snippy and Gromov are made to peer mediate by way of forced teamwork, with some very unexpected consequences.
1. 01: The Operation

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. I am only borrowing!

A/N: You are all lovely people. Thank you SO MUCH for all the kind reviews I got last time!:

So this longer (!), chaptered (!) story features primarily Snippy and Gromov, because I really like the relationship between the two. No romance whatsoever.

Warnings: We'll go general here for the long stretch ... language, graphic imagery, violence, torture, angst, shockingly inaccurate weapons knowledge, and poorly written fight scenes. Starts out really light, gets pretty dark. Should cover it.

As always, feel free to review for anything from OOC (always a concern) to typos. And if anyone cares to feed my muse and give me story ideas, fire at will. :D

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**Survivor's Guilt**

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**01 The Operation  
**

The mission, termed Operation Ninja Sniper, had, of course, been Captain's idea. And that meant that as soon as Charles Snippy, sniper extraordinaire and the unluckiest human being to ever survive the end of the world, attempted to carry it out in order to placate his commanding officer, things immediately went to shit and it all blew up in his face. He could have seen it coming, really. Should have seen it coming.

But somehow, still didn't.

The plan hadn't been simple from the start Captain had only made it sound that way. Earlier that morning, the purple-eyed commanding officer had jolted the sniper awake from where he'd fallen fast asleep outside on watch (again) with a loud blast of an air horn.

As Snippy was recovering from the mild heart attack that he had suffered upon being woken up so abruptly, Captain had calmly tossed the abrasively loud improvised alarm clock over his shoulder and started explaining the task.

"Now, Mr. Snippy. The operation commences at sunrise."

"Wha wait, what?" Snippy had said, heart still pounding from his sudden awakening and mind still stuck on where on Earth Captain had gotten an honest-to-God air horn of all things from.

"Operation Ninja Sniper."

That got Snippy's attention. Those were three words he never ordinarily wanted to hear, and definitely not together in a sentence, and certainly not at it's-too-fucking-early o'clock on a day that certainly already felt like a Monday, had what people left on Earth still abided by such meaningless measurements of time anymore.

"Enlighten me," Snippy muttered, wondering why he even bothered asking when the answer was never something good for his mental or physical health.

"It is your new mission," Captain said, sweeping around and grabbing Snippy by the shoulders, shaking him fully awake. Someone's a morning person, the sniper thought irritably, heaven help us all. "Listen up."

"Yeah, 'm listening."

"You must go to the other side of the city," Captain said, oblivious to his minion's annoyance.

"You know a hostile gang occupies that area, right?"

"... and then you will bring back food."

"... and we haven't even scouted that location and checked for radiation yet. You know, on account of the unfriendly residents there"

"... and then you will drop by the candy store and pick up some of the delicious little colorful candies for me."

"Candy store?"

"Don't be dumb, Mr. Snippy. You know, the one with the white walls and the shelves of candy in the cute little bottles!"

"You mean the drugstore? Captain, that's not even ... oh God, never mind."

That explains so much about absolutely fucking everything, Snippy thought in a stunning moment of glorious realization.

"And then you shall scamper on home like a good Snippy sniper and claim another victory for Captainia!"

Snippy shook off his minor epiphany and turned his mind back to the mission at hand. There wasn't any way he was getting out of this one by any means of rational argumentation, because Snippy had learned very early on that, in a fight of logic vs. Captain, logic would lose every time. Taking into account the fact that they were running low on food and medicine anyway, the sniper actually started to think seriously about the details of the plan.

Well, it's not impossible, he concluded with a vague sense of hope. It wasn't like he had to fetch a unicorn. Or make a flying machine. Or re-enact Shakespeare's Macbeth from memory, playing all characters and getting a faceful of hot tea whenever he screwed up, which was often, considering his lack of knowledge of any literature that weren't TPS reports and debriefing documents back in his time with the Directorate.

Yeah. So. A stealth supply run isn't terrible, all things considered. It'll be all right, as long as -

"And bring Engie with you," Captain said, stating the exact opposite of what Snippy hadn't even finished thinking.

"No," Snippy responded flatly, but was ignored yet again.

"Mr. Engie, come here!" Captain called.

"What now," came the annoyed voice that didn't even bother to phrase the response into a question. In a few moments, the disgruntled-looking engineer emerged from the large storehouse they currently called home, finishing up the last of a can of mystery meat that served as his breakfast.

"You have been drafted to be part of Operation Ninja Sniper!"

"I don't know what that is, and I don't want to know," the engineer said, immediately turning to go back inside. Captain reached out and snagged him by the hood of his jacket, spinning him around again.

"You shall obey my wishes, Engie."

"No. The name of the operation is Ninja Sniper. There is no mention of Engineer or Engie or Alexander Gromov anywhere in there."

"Captain, just let him stay here," Snippy pleaded, provoking a suspicious why-are-you-being-so-nice glare from Gromov. "He's useless out there."

"I can hear you, you know," Gromov drawled sarcastically, but he didn't make an effort to contradict the sniper. Captain shook his head, raised his mug in an almost sarcastic toast, and swept away with a swish of his long coat and the resounding thud of his heavy boots on the ground.

"You know he can't defend himself. I'm not playing babysitter on a mission like this," Snippy shouted after his commanding officer. "I'm not a tour guide anymore, and I don't need any fucking tourists!"

With a roar of pure rage, Gromov tackled the sniper as hard as he could, sending them both crashing hard to the ground. They rolled around, scrabbling, cursing, snarling like animals, landing vicious punches and kicks wherever they could, until Gromov managed to win the upper hand and ended up kneeling on the sniper's legs.

"Don't you fucking insult me," Gromov growled, pinning the sniper's arms down and shaking him roughly.

"It's not an insult if it's true," Snippy spat, and twisted and kicked out as hard as he could, throwing Gromov off him and tumbling back into the dirt. Before he could lunge forward and grab the engineer and punch him hard in the face like the bastard really deserved and was really asking for, a hand grabbed his collar, jerking him backwards and half-choking him.

"Bwah!"

"And this, mein minions, is exactly why you must go on this mission together," Captain intoned from somewhere behind the sniper. He pushed the marksman forward, and Snippy stumbled over to where Gromov was standing with a nervously guilty look on his face, like a child in front of his disapproving father. There was a finality in Captain's tone and an enough-is-enough look in his unrelenting purple eyes that immediately commanded both the sniper and the engineer's undivided attentions. He looked at each of his men in turn, but neither were willing nor able to meet his dispassionate stare. "Do you know what the other name of this mission is?"

"Uhh ..." Snippy said eloquently.

"It is called Operation Team Building Exercise and it do you know what it means?"

"To build a team?" Gromov hazarded a guess, showing off the true worth of his PhD.

"It means cooperation and trust. If you do not learn teamwork out here then we will all suffer and maybe even you will die. You understand me, ja?"

Snippy and Gromov exchanged looks. What with the air horn shenanigans and eating-pills-like-candy craziness and that followed him around, Snippy often forgot why Captain was their Captain. But it was these moments when the sniper was reminded that, frighteningly enough, Captain was the smartest one all of them. At least he knew the harsh truth: work together to pull through the day-to-day drudgery that life had become, or else die separately and alone in the unforgiving wasteland.

And also, the man was fucking terrifying when he was angry.

"All right, Captain, I'll bring him along," Snippy said grudgingly.

"I'll go with him," Gromov replied, sound as unhappy as the sniper felt.

"Excellent, mein minions!" Captain said, reverting back to his default blithe and cheery personality with a frightening suddenness. "Operation Sneaking Ninja Team Building Exercise is now in effect. And bring back delicious noms, or else you will FACE MY WRATH."

Snippy saluted wearily and shouldered his rifle, readying himself for the long walk and dangerous mission ahead. Checking to make sure the engineer was tagging along behind him, he set out into the wasteland with a sinking feeling that whatever he was in for, it was a terrible idea. Being the unlucky bastard that he was, the sniper had an unerring intuition born of having a lifetime of misfortune, and so as it turned out, he was right.

Things went horribly, terribly wrong.

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And there was the set up, next comes the fall! :D


	2. 02: Fire At Will

A/N: Thank you to all reviewers!

I just realized that this story is a bit AU because I just made up a random history for these characters for the sake of storytelling. I can understand if you guys don't like that, but I hope it works out regardless! Enjoy & please review (:

Warnings: language, violence, borderline torture, a badly written fight scene, and two really nasty OCs.

EDIT: based on a very good point made by you lovely reviewers, I've changed the ending a little ... and by changed, I mean I set Gromov and Snippy on fire. It makes more sense in context! Eheheh. :]

02 Fire At Will

Sometime hours into the mission, somewhere deep into enemy territory, things finally went to hell.

When the sniper spun around and discovered that the almost childishly defenseless engineer was no longer following behind him, but had somehow walked ahead without knowing or thinking about what could have been there - then it was just two words and three quick steps, and that was all it took.

"Snippy?" the engineer called to him from around the corner, sounding vaguely panicked.

"Gromov!"

Three steps to the corner of the street where the engineer had disappeared, and then -

Snippy came face to face with the engineer and the three other men who immediately leveled their weapons at his chest.

"Oh, shit," he swore.

"That's right," the leader of the gang of men said, a man with short, bristly dark hair, shifty eyes, and a cunning, slippery rat-like sneer on his face. "Two birds with one stone. Not bad."

The group of hostile wastelanders advanced on the sniper, who quickly looked them over, judging if he could take them down. They were all dressed in dirty, torn clothing, but they stood tall and strong and carried weapons they clearly had no qualms about using. Confronted with a machete's blade, the point of a wickedly sharpened pipe, and the business end of a sleek, deadly-looking assault rifle, the sniper had no choice but to put his hands up, surrender his own beloved weapon to the rat-faced man, and step in line beside the engineer, who already had his hands tied behind his back. "Tie him up. We'll take them both back to base. The boss will want to interrogate them."

Snippy glanced over at Gromov. He felt the strain, the nervous tension emanating off the man, the borderline panic. The man was starting to tremble in fear, but he refused to meet the sniper's eyes. He resolutely kept his head down and his breathing as even as he could manage. The demonstration of courage was nearly heartwarming, but Snippy hardly had time to feel touched.

Ratface pulled the sniper's wrists together, bound them far too tightly for comfort, and forced him to look forward with a swipe to the face with the butt of his gun. The sniper gasped in pain and dropped his own head down in a semblance of defeat. His mind spun furiously.

Get out. How do we get out of this, how do we fucking GET OUT -

He had nothing.

The two were marched at a quick clip through the abandoned city for what seemed like hours and hours, up the alleys and down the streets, through the tunnels and under the bridges. Even Snippy, who spent nearly all his waking hours doing reconnaissance of the place, was slightly confused as to their whereabouts. Beside him, he could hear Gromov stumbling, his breathing growing ragged and strained. Realizing that the long walk must have been exhausting and probably terrifying for him, the sniper turned to the engineer, who finally looked back over at him.

"Are you all right?" Snippy whispered. Gromov reluctantly shook his head. One of Ratface's men jabbed the engineer sharply in the side with his improvised spear, prodding him forward.

"Shut up and keep up," the goon snarled. "Or I'll stick you for real."

They were eventually brought to the very edge of the city, the place that had previously been the manufacturing district. The group's base was in a disused processing factory of some sort. The heavy steel doors of the loading bay were shoved open with an ear-piercing screech of rusty metal. The sniper and engineer were shepherded inside, through another maze of hallways and corridors.

Right turn. Left turn. Left turn. Straight, right turn, the sniper noted mentally.

They finally arrived somewhere at the back of the building and were tossed unceremoniously into a room.

The room was once for storage, now occupied only by red barrels of what appeared to be a large stash of gasoline - not that such things had much use anymore, anyway. It was expansive but bleak, just six walls of bare concrete lit by the sickly sticky light of fluorescent bulbs. The sniper and the engineer were tied to poles in the center of the room by their wrists and ankles, and the door was slammed shut.

In the silence that ensued, Snippy heard Gromov still breathing hard, on the verge of hyperventilation.

"Are you okay?" he asked again. "Just ... keep it together. I'll think of a way to get us out."

"I don't like this," Gromov said, voice edged with panic.

"No shit," Snippy said as evenly as he could, testing his ties. Damn it, ow, these knots are tight. Well, at least they're professional. "It's all right," he said, mostly to comfort the engineer but also to reassure himself. But apparently it was not all right with Gromov, who, with a sudden and frightening burst of energy, started thrashing against his bonds.

"Hey, what are you doing?" roared a furious voice from the doorway. Ratface suddenly stepped into the room carrying Snippy's weapon. He strode across the room and whipped the butt of the gun sideways, catching the engineer solidly in the face. Gromov's head snapped back, and he cried out in pain.

"Bastard! Leave him alone!" Snippy snarled angrily.

"Touching. But I'd be more worried about your own well-being," rasped a voice from the doorway that sounded like metal grating on metal, like broken glass shards were lodged in the speaker's throat. Another man stepped in. Based on the way he sauntered like he owned the place, Snippy assumed he was the "Boss" that Ratface was talking about before. He, like his companion, was dressed in old clothing. He had a tattered black scarf tied tightly around his neck and the lower half of his face was obscured by a dirty red bandanna. Upon seeing his strung-up hostages, his green eyes lit up with a dangerous, malicious glee. On his back, he carried what seemed to be a heavy pack, and in his hands he held a strange long-muzzled gun of some sort that looked completely foreign, yet still vaguely familiar.

Is that - ?

Snippy's question wasn't even formed in his mind when the boss answered it for him. He shook a curtain of straggly blonde hair from his eyes, raised the gun up, took aim at the sniper, and from twenty feet across the room, shot a stream of liquid fire from his flamethrower.

"Holy FUCK!" Snippy yelled, thrashing around as the flames engulfed him. He felt the terrible roar of death, felt the incredible heat searing his body even through his mask and fireproof jacket, felt the flames licking at his exposed neck. The very last thing he registered before his mind degenerated into a whirling madness of fear and pain and confusion was that, somewhere beside him, Gromov was incoherently screaming bloody murder.

It was all over in an eternity that was only mere seconds. When the fire shut off, the merciful peace it brought was so absolute it was almost heavenly. The sudden silence was only broken by Gromov's broken whimpers. The flamethrower man stepped forward, his eyes glinting with a sick animalistic satisfaction. Small streams of fire dripped from the tip of his weapon.

"Hello gentlemen," he grated in his mutilated voice. "My name is Red and this is my girl. Did you like her? I built her myself. Always wanted live targets. Thank you for obliging me," he said, gesturing to his flamethrower, clearly proud of his handiwork. "5-gallon petrol tank. Electric-wire coil ignition. Top range of fifty feet. Cool, eh? You're lucky your jacket is certified level-one fireproof, blue-eyes. Or else that would've hurt like all fucking hell."

"What do you want?" Snippy asked flatly, not mentioning that it already had hurt like all fucking hell. He was suddenly drained of all will to retaliate, although some small part of his brain that clearly had no instinct of self-preservation was impressed by the weapon nonetheless.

"Oh, or we could get right down to business," Red said, sounding theatrically disappointed in his victim's unwillingness to play along. "You seem reasonable enough, blue-eyes."

Snippy snorted.

"Listen. My men are starving and freezing. We want supplies. Food. Water. Medicine. Clothing. Weapons. I can tell just from looking at you two that you've a stockpile of those things. Tell me where your stuff is, and I won't torch you a second time. Especially that guy." He nodded at Gromov, and raised his flamethrower if to fire it off at him. "He doesn't seem to like fire very much."

Gromov cowered and whimpered.

"You're out of luck," the sniper said truthfully, trying to distract the man from sadistically picking at the last shreds of the engineer's already frayed sanity. "We don't have any food or medicine either."

"And guess what I'm gonna to say to that?"

"That you don't believe me," Snippy sighed. "It's true, though. We were sent to steal your supplies, but if you're all as desperate as we are, then ..."

"Sent? Oh? Sent by who, exactly?"

Oh, fuck. Snippy clamped his mouth shut.

"What? No? All right then," Red said gleefully, taking aim at the engineer and letting loose a stream of fire.

Gromov thrashed around like a crazed animal.

"No! I'M SORRY! FORGIVE ME!" he screamed, in pain underlaid with some deeper, darker emotion, causing both Red and the sniper to look over at him in amazement, concern, and confusion.

"Stop, stop! Leave him alone!" Snippy yelled, and Red shut his gun off, waiting expectantly. "Captain sent us."

"Captain? You'll have to be more specific than that."

"Wait, hold on," Ratface interjected. "Captain? Tall, German, long coat and hat? That purple-eyed fucker?"

Those last words were hissed with a bitter hatred. Ratface glanced over at Red, whose eyes widened in realization. Something changed in his demeanor. The sadistic glee was gone, replaced by anger so deep and burning that Snippy shivered at meeting his eyes.

"Oh. You're Captain's men," Red said, with a low, dangerous tone that made the sniper's heart leap into his throat.

Red took a few steps forward.

"See, I have a score to settle with your Captain."

A few more steps forward. He leaned right into Snippy's face.

"And a certain blue-eyed sniper who works for him."

Oh. Fuck.

Red pried Snippy's mask off and tossed it to one side. A grin crept onto his face.

"Oh, it is you." Red grated, breathing heavily into Snippy's ear. The sniper squirmed away as much as he was able to. "Do you remember me, blue-eyes?"

Snippy stared blankly. Slowly, a vague flicker of a memory lit up in the back of his mind, but it was an unpleasant one - full of thick smoke, the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder, and the screams of the dead, and blood. Blood everywhere. He tried to bury it again, but there was Red, talking right into his ear in an insidious, rasping whisper that set his nerves on edge. And the man's hand was coming up, settling on the other side of his face, stroking softly and holding him close and making sure he heard every last word.

The sniper's skin crawled. He nearly gagged.

"Remember that one time?" Red said. "Oh, it was years ago. Only a few months after this world was blasted into this godforsaken wasteland. And it was wintertime, a fucking brutal nuclear winter, and my men and I were starving and you and your Captain had food in your bunker."

Snippy swallowed hard. He knew where this story was going.

"Oh my God, it's you ..." Snippy whispered.

"Oh God yes, it's me," Red snarled. "You remember that raid I conducted with my men? Twenty of us against you, your Captain, and that batshit insane green-eyed swordsman."

Red roughly pushed away from Snippy and paced angrily, agitatedly, as he all but shouted in the sniper's face.

"We were hungry! Desperate! All we wanted was food. A can. A scrap. Something to eat. And what did you three do? You killed almost every single one of my men. My friends."

And with frightening suddenness, Red slunk back up to the sniper and put his face inches from Snippy's, voice sliding back to a low and dangerous growl.

"Almost every one of us except for him there -" Ratface nodded in acknowledgement.

"And you," Snippy finished.

"And me," Red agreed. "But you remember what you did do to me, don't you? You fucking failure of a sniper, you put two bullets through my neck and blasted half my fucking face off and I didn't die. You should have killed me, sniper. It was - it is - pain that I wouldn't wish on anybody else ... well, except for you."

Oh, God, Snippy thought, mind flashing back to the day of the raid.

He remembered how he had, trembling with fear, loaded up and indiscriminately shot down men like he was putting down rabid animals, because if he didn't, they'd kill him first. How his badly his hands had shaken when he was taking the shot at Red, who was just a man as frightened and inexperienced as he had been. And how he'd missed, and how he'd been too horrified to deal the man a mercy-killing before Ratface had snatched his horribly mangled friend away and run off.

Snippy remembered the dreams he had for months afterwards, nightmares even more intense than the ones ANNET had given him. Dreams full of blood and gunsmoke, guilt, paranoia, fear. The harsh realities of wasteland life had been new to him back then. But not anymore.

"Then give me back my rifle, I'll finish the job off," Snippy said, half-tauntingly and half-earnestly. Brave words for a man no longer afraid of killing, but still terrified of dying.

"Oh, no, sniper. I'm done wanting to die. I've moved on to making you want to die. I've thought hard about this. I'm going to kill you by inches. I'll flay your skin off. Cut your tongue out. Burn your pretty eyes blind. Then I'll stop and let you go off into the wasteland and we'll see if you last as long as I did."

Snippy looked blankly at the psychopath standing in front of him with a crazed glint in his animal eyes. The man advanced, raising his flamethrower.

There was a strangled yell. Red spun around in time to see Gromov break free of his bonds and drop Ratface with a well-placed punch between the eyes.

"Surprise, you fucker," Gromov growled. In his hand flashed a small knife, glinting sharp and silver in the dim lighting of the storage room. Red paused for a brief, crucial second and Gromov leapt like a wild tiger, lashing out wildly with his blade. He managed to nick Red in the wrist, slicing deep through the muscle and making him drop his gun in surprise, and followed up with a nearly graceful sweeping kick to the back of the knees that brought Red crashing to the ground. For good measure, the engineer launched a vicious kick at the man's chest, causing him to curl up in pain.

"What the fuck!" Snippy said. "Gromov?"

The engineer was already working on cutting the ropes binding him to the pole.

"I ... might have learned a thing or two about fighting from watching you," he explained almost embarrassedly. "Pilot gave me the knife and told me to always keep it up my sleeve just in case."

"I - uh, wow, nicely done," Snippy said, shaking his head in amazement as he started to follow Gromov of the room. They hadn't taken three steps when a hand clamped down on the engineer's ankle and dragged him down.

"Gromov!" Snippy said, and was met with a faceful of flame. He remembered too late that he didn't have his mask on, and threw his hand up to shield himself when a heavy weight collided with him and he was brought down. A fist connected with his face, then a heavy boot to his chest, then another, then another. He curled up, protecting his head with his arms, and waited out the barrage.

He tasted blood, but he realized he had a bigger problem when something else cold, wet, and slick splashed over him, something that smelled a lot like gasoline. He vaguely remembered that there were barrels of it stored around the room ...

Oh, FUCK.

"This'll do, I guess. So long, yellow-eyes. Goodbye, sniper," he heard Red growl out before the steel door shut with a clang.

Chak went the deadbolt.

With a growing terror, he realized that Ratface had managed to douse the entire floor in gasoline.

And Red had set the room on fire.

The hungry flames roared up, immediately catching on his gasoline-soaked clothing and setting him on fire. Snippy scrambled to his feet, realizing that stopping, dropping, and rolling would be useless, lest he roll in more fuel and make the situation worse.

All right. I've got maybe ... five minutes before I run out of air, he thought with surprising calmness and rationality. But only three minutes before this burns through my jacket. He scrambled to his feet, blinking the harsh smoke away from his eyes, grabbed his mask from where it lay on the ground, and scooped up his gun from where Ratface had left it. He immediately sought out Gromov in the large room, heading toward the direction of the panicked screaming. The engineer, who had apparently escaped being doused in fuel, was cowering in a corner far away from the fire, curled up with his knees to his chest, a blank look in his eyes and a steady stream of words tumbling from his mouth.

Oh God no I'm sorry forgive me forgive me I'm so sorry, the sniper could vaguely make out.

Snippy had no time to figure out what exactly the engineer meant by any of that, only realizing that the man had a phobia of fire, or at the very least that it was triggering some kind of trauma previously buried deep in him, and that they both really had to get out right fucking now if they didn't want to asphyxiate or roast alive, as per Red's intentions.

"Snap out of it, Gromov!" he yelled, choking on the thick, acrid smoke that his respirator was doing nothing to filter out.

But the sight of the sniper, body streaming fire and voice loud and strident, seemed to spook him more. The engineer pressed himself further into the corner. Snippy took a breath, realizing that there was no easy, painless way to accomplish the task. Especially the part about pain, because he had a fireproof jacket on, and the engineer didn't.

The fire on his jacket was starting to singe his arms. He could feel of his gloves starting to melt, starting to sear the backs of his hands even through the thick material. Wasting no time, the sniper hauled the engineer up by the arms and as carefully as he could, given the circumstances, half-dragged him toward the door. They had to go straight through the worst of the flames, which Snippy hardly cared about, as he was already on fire. But became more and more agitated, flailing around wildly and making it impossible for Snippy to carry him without lighting Gromov up.

"Fine, we'll do it the hard way," Snippy grunted, and bodily shoved the engineer through the wall of fire to the other side, closer to the door. But leaping through the curtain of flames to land right in front of the engineer was a terrible idea. Gromov clutched at the wall and screamed like demons were after him, which, the sniper thought, they probably are. At least he has the good luck to not also be on fire. I don't even know how I'd deal with him otherwise.

The heat in the room was growing intense, choking off Snippy's breath, and he guessed he had maybe only a minute and a half left before he burned up. He kicked as hard as he could at the door, feeling the door shake with a hollow thud. With satisfaction, he noted how rusty and disused the door looked. Encouraged, he threw himself at it again and again, hearing the hinges creaking, the frame cracking ... but door wouldn't give.

Between the gasoline that had started to drip from his hood into his mask and the fire that had crawled up his body to lick at his unexposed neck, it was getting more painful and difficult to move. Black haze was eating away at the edges of his vision. He dropped to his knees and pressed his face to the small opening between the bottom of the door and the ground, drawing in a merciful breath of fresh, cool air.

"Snippy, I'm sorry," Gromov said, completely lucidly and entirely calm. The sniper gave him a sharp look, thinking he'd come around, but it was like watching a sleepwalker ambling along, lights on, no one home. Snippy figured that the man's brain had finally shut down and his body was just running on autopilot. Just words directly to actions, no emotions or thoughts in between. Good. It was better for him that way. "I'm sorry that we're going to die and it's all my fault. Please forgive me."

"You ... you don't know what you're talking about, Gromov," Snippy said uneasily, staggering to his feet. "We're not going to die."

Snippy started attacking the door again, going at it with all his strength. He rammed at it with his weapon, scratched at it desperately, kicked as hard as he could ... The doorframe buckled, but didn't give.

Exhausted, he knelt and pulled in more air. Then up again, and at the door. His head swam. He was taking in more smoke than oxygen, and even so his breaths were too shallow. He could barely see straight.

"Snippy, stop. It's useless."

"No! It. Fucking. ISN'T!" Snippy said, hurling his entire body at the door in a last-ditch attempt to batter it open.

And finally, miracle of miracles, the door creaked, cracked and burst open, and the sniper fell out of the room, rolling and tumbling over and over until every last spark of fire on him was put out. He lay on his back, spread-eagled, heaving for breath. The air on the other side was cold, piercing on his skin and raw in his charred lungs. He felt like he was breathing in knives, like glass shards were cutting his skin open, like he had been dropped into the depths of a frozen ocean.

And it was the most beautiful thing he had ever felt, but he couldn't stay put any longer.

"Gromov!" Snippy called. The engineer stumbled out as the entire room suddenly erupted into a fireball. The sniper scrambled to his feet. "Come on, run!"

The two men took off at a dead sprint through the old factory, ducking left and right around the corners as Snippy had remembered from the route in, finally stumbling outside into the wastelands. Never have I been so fucking happy to see this shithole of a city, the sniper thought.

When they were finally safely away from the factory, they slowed to a walk, both coughing up the last of the smoke in their lungs.

The sniper looked over at the engineer, who was still in his creepy, semi-catatonic, sleepwalker's daze, stumbling along behind him.

"All right. Let's go home."

Wow, that was a long chapter ... !


	3. 03: Target Practice

A/N: You know that thing that happens when real life gets in the way of writing? ._. Well, that certainly was a longer absence than I planned ... but I'm back! And now presenting two things I don't particularly enjoy writing - dream sequences and dialogue scenes. I screwed with style for the first part to make it more dreamy and stream-of-consciousness-ey.

Again, please feel free to review, especially suggestions, questions, and constructive criticism! It helps me write better :D

Warnings: disturbing imagery in the first part, language as always, lack of action / walls of dialogue, annnnnnd a large serving of angst sandwich.

* * *

**03 Target Practice**

It always starts the same way, with him standing on the streets of an unnamed city that he knows is his home.

He knows everything, it seems.

He knows that the ground beneath his feet is ground zero, and he also knows that what he's waiting for is the moment of detonation. Everything is calm and quiet before the cataclysm, the deconstructing storm he's called down on the world. Everything is silent. Nothing moves. Nothing sounds. The tension cuts like a knife, and he can feel it in his bones.

The only thing not balancing on a razor's edge, frozen in anticipation, is his heart, beating too loudly in his chest.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

A silent four count, and then the wind comes. It starts as a breeze, then picks up to hurricane force. The silence is broken, crumbles and shatters like glass before the hideous, frenzied roaring whipping up around him. He can't breathe because the slipstream is too fast against his face, it's worming its way into his lungs, down his throat, and it feels really sick and wrong and he's struggling for breath before -

- the light. He braces himself against the power he's unleashed and watches the world light up. He's bathed in a nuclear white, something keener and brighter and more brilliant than anything he could ever have imagined existed. It is singlehandedly the most terrible and most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he feels for a long, glorious moment, greater than human.

A god, maybe. A destroyer? Yes.

In slow motion, he watches buildings lift off their foundations, tiles scraping off roofs, wood splintering, concrete shattering, metal warping. Human figures now, disintegrating before him. Skin flaying off, hair scorching, eyes bursting from the heat, bones charring to ash.

He alone is untouched, unscathed. A twisted rush of euphoria sings through his veins, dropping him to his knees. He's destroyed the world, he's destroyed the world.

His vision shimmers, and when he stands again, he is standing in the fires that are consuming the now-wasteland, and he is burning. His whole body is in raw, agonizing pain, so bad that he can barely move. But he forces himself to back up slowly, because the survivors of the apocalyptic blast have found him.

_Help us,_ they scream, as they approach him. Some walk lopsidedly, dragging their useless limbs. Some crawl on their flash-burned hands and knees, and some, arms and legs blasted off entirely, thrash their horrible, slow, painful way along to him.

The sight of them is horrifying - sickening - it's all he can do to keep from vomiting.

The survivors are barely recognizable as human. Large swaths of their skin are seared off, exposing bloody, charred flesh. Their bodies are contorted into unnatural shapes, their faces dripping onto caved-in chests. Hands twisted. Bones pulverized. Legs crabbed sideways.

And still, they manage to sickeningly flail toward him, heedless of the fire and destruction, leaving a trail of liquified skin and body parts as they passed -

_You did this to us, _they say, turning their accusatory, misshapen faces.

"Oh God," he whispers in horror. "No, I'm so, so sorry."

And then one of the survivors steps up, and it's a man with familiar, piercing, sky-blue eyes that are vivid and accusatory in spite of the state of his mangled body.

_This is your fault,_ blue-eyes tells him. _This is your fault alone._ He's joined by a half-faced man with straggly blonde hair, and the dangerous look of a wild animal in his eyes.

_You did this to us_, the half-faced man spits. _You fucking MONSTER._

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispers, his throat burned raw by the heat. And he keeps backing up but his foot slips off the edge of a crater, a three-hundred foot deep, mile-in-diameter scar in the earth that glows hot as the sun itself and roils with restless fire. The point of impact of the nuclear strike.

_WHY? _the blue-eyed man asks. _WHY DID YOU DO THIS? _

"I don't know! I don't know!"

And the half-faced man opens his mouth wide, and instead of words, out comes a twisting spiral of fire that pushes him back until he loses his footing at the edge of the blast crater. Gravity takes over and he goes tumbling backwards into the hell that he has created, feeling his skin melt from his bones and his heart burst from the heat - and the pain is unbearable, indescribable, but he does not black out.

He just keeps falling weightlessly, without end, his whole body tensing for the impact that he knows will never come -

* * *

For the third time that night and what felt like the thousandth time that week, Alexander Gromov woke up screaming and screaming until he could draw no more air and his heart was nearly breaking through his rib cage, it was pounding so hard -

* * *

No matter how long he'd lived in the wastelands and how many strange sounds he had grown accustomed to during what seemed like an eternity living there, Charles Snippy knew that one noise in particular _never_ heralded pleasant things, especially not when served as a wake-up call.

_Crack._

_BOOM._

As soon as he recognized the sharp, whip-like sound of a bullet being fired off and the thunderous echo roaring back, Snippy sat bolt upright on the lumpy, uncomfortable bare mattress that served as his bed, immediately launched from a deep exhaustion-induced sleep to panicked and wide awake in a matter of seconds. His head swam with vertigo from getting up so suddenly and and his still-healing burns from the flamethrower incident ripped pain through his body. But he realized that being wide awake literally could have been the difference between life or death and shook off the nauseous, tilt-a-whirl feeling. He listened closely, just to be sure.

_Crack. _

_BOOM._

Definitely gunfire. His stomach flipped and his heart leapt into his throat.

_Red and Ratface._

Maybe they had come looking to finish exacting their revenge. No doubt they were still pissed as hell - _actually, _the sniper thought_, that's putting it rather lightly_. He and Gromov had escaped the two sadistic men only a week and a half ago. It was plenty of time for the hostiles to gather a force and seek them out.

_No, no, fuck, no_, Snippy swore as he scrambled out of bed, reaching beside him for his rifle, which he had taken to bed with him as he always did. Gromov could laugh at him all he wanted for sleeping with his gun, but it was in these moments that the extra precautions helped. As quietly as he could, the sniper stalked down the hallways of the building that was their base. Captain, Pilot, and Gromov were all nowhere to be seen. Panicking in earnest, he started sprinting, flicking off the safety and cocking back the bolt on his weapon as he went.

_Crack._

The bullet -

_BOOM._

- and the echo.

That was three gunshots so far. One for each of his companions?

_Oh, God_. _No, no, please no,_ he thought, turning from cursing to pleading pathetically. When he rounded the final corner and sprinted down the corridor to the entranceway, he could see a vague, dark figure standing outside in the courtyard, in the shadows of what was once a brick wall.

He didn't have time to register why the intruder seemed to be firing _out_ into the wasteland and not in toward the building, and why he was reloading his weapon with an inexperienced clumsiness, and why he actually seemed vaguely familiar. No, Snippy acted out of sheer panic and instinct. He stepped up to the doorway, braced himself, and raised his own gun.

_CrackBOOM_. A warning shot fired just inches away from the intruder's face.

Across the courtyard, Alexander Gromov practically jumped out of his skin. He dropped his gun immediately, whirled around, and held his hands above his head. Sheer terror showed in his copper eyes, harsh and clear even through the tinted lens of his mask.

"No, don't - " he cried, and then stopped.

There was a moment of stunned silence and a thousand thoughts sped through the sniper's brain. He had nearly _killed_ Gromov, or rather, Gromov had nearly gotten _himself_ killed, pulling such a fucking stupid stunt, what the fucking _hell_ was the man thinking, but thank God it wasn't Red or Ratface, and this meant that Pilot and Captain were probably okay too. Immediately, that thought took over and it calmed him down, made him feel much better ...

"Jesus Christ, Gromov, what the _fuck_ are you doing?" the sniper shouted, once he regained his ability to speak. The engineer cowered away from him, actually _cowered_ and hid his face. The sniper stepped back, shocked, and switched tactics. "Ok. It's all right, Gromov. It's just me. Relax."

The engineer relaxed, and with a visible effort, met the sniper's eyes.

"Where are Captain and Pilot?"

"Wh - I don't know! They're off in the wastelands somewhere!"

"Gromov, are you ... all right?" Snippy asked, noticing how nervous the engineer looked.

"For fuck's sake, Snippy! You nearly _shot me_!"

"Oh, _sorry_," the sniper said bitingly, "I'm just a little jumpy, I guess. I guess it's no big deal to hear _gunfire_. _Outside_. At the _crack of dawn_. A week and a half after we escape from a bunch of _homicidal maniacs_. And with you and Pilot and Captain all _gone from the building. _Gromov, what the fuck was I supposed to think?"

"I - I don't know. I wasn't thinking," Gromov mumbled, shrinking away from Snippy again when he stepped close to talk. Snippy, confused and concerned in earnest now, backed off a few steps.

"It's all right, Gromov," Snippy said placatingly. But as Gromov tried to brush by him and back into the building, the sniper deftly the engineer by the hood of his parka. "Nice try. But you still have to explain yourself."

"I was just practicing," the engineer said defensively, jerking out of his grasp.

"Practicing," Snippy repeated dumbly, just to make sure he heard right. "Practicing what?"

"You know. Marksmanship."

There was a long, careful silence in which Snippy's brain sorted through a list of possible responses. "All right," the sniper finally sighed, his curiosity winning over his anger. "It is _way_ too early for this. Why don't you stop and come inside for now? Take a break from your ... target practice."

Snippy turned and headed for the kitchen, with the engineer trailing reluctantly behind like a chastised child. The sniper stepped aside into a corner of the room rummaged through the food supplies he and Pilot had managed to scrounge up - a food run had eventually been accomplished, homicidal, grudge-bearing, flamethrower-wielding maniacs notwithstanding. They'd just gone to the exact _opposite_ side of town to pick up a few rusty, but uncontaminated tins of mystery meat and syrupy fruit. Snippy sat, tossed a can to Gromov and gestured at the chair opposite him.

"Sit down. And stop playing with that gun," the sniper said, relieving the engineer of his weapon and feeling the man flinch away from him again. "Why are you so jumpy? I'm not_ mad_ at you, okay? Really. It's just that - oh God, where do I even start ... Look, where did you even find this gun?"

"I went for a walk yesterday. It was in some abandoned building. I took it."

Snippy glanced sharply over at Gromov. The sniper wasn't surprised that his colleague had found a gun, exactly - one could stumble across just about anything in the wasteland, guns included. And he didn't _seem_ to be lying about wandering off, as he had no reason to be deceptive. But it was just highly uncharacteristic of the engineer to_ go_ _for a walk_ into _some abandoned building _and just start _taking things_ like fucking _hunting rifles_. And on his own volition, no less. Due to Snippy's Captain-designated job as team babysitter, the only time Gromov hadn't been in his sight was at night. When everyone was asleep. Or, at least, _supposed_ to be asleep.

"Is it good?"

"It's not bad, actually," Snippy said slowly, although his brain was working furiously, trying to reason out what exactly was going on. "Bolt-action, thirty-aught six caliber, made for huntingbig things. Needs maintenance, but I could do that. It's good. So what exactly were you planning on doing with this thing?" the sniper asked. He was rather impressed in spite of himself. Gromov had looted a good, useful item.

"I _told_ you already, I'm learning to shoot."

"Pointing your gun over a wall and pulling the trigger randomly doesn't count as either learning or shooting."

"I've seen you do it enough times. I figured I'd just copy you."

"That's not a very good tactic."

"It's worked before."

"This is different. This isn't like first aid or even throwing punches. It's really not that easy just to learn by watching," the sniper said. "Shooting involves techniques that can't be learned so intuitively."

"Then I'll do it the hard way," Gromov countered. "I'll find some books on it. I was going to ask you to teach me, but _clearly_ that's out of the question now."

"Why are you so bent on learning?" Snippy asked. "You were completely fine not knowing how before."

"You're always bitching about how useless I am, and now you're unhappy because I'm trying to make your life easier?"

Snippy didn't have an answer to that because Gromov was right, but neither was he satisfied with the answer he got. It was too easy, too sarcastic, too flippant. Too evasive. Too much like the engineer _really_ didn't want to admit something.

"I wasn't going to say no. To teaching you, I mean. It would be very useful if you knew how to use that thing," the sniper admitted.

"Really?" Gromov asked suspiciously.

"Well, yeah. _But_. I have to know why, first."

"Why?"

"I need to know if you know what you're getting into. This isn't a toy. If you don't know what you're doing, you could kill people. You could kill _yourself_."

"I told you already, I'm just - "

"Trying to make my life easier. Yeah. I'm not buying it. You're never that considerate, you asshole," Snippy said, raising his voice over the engineer's objection.

"Thanks, Snippy. Real mature."

"Well, you're not telling me the truth!" the sniper yelled, actually and outright angry now. He pushed himself away from the table with enough violence to topple his chair and turned away from Gromov, calming his breathing, determined to remain rational after his outburst.

"I _am_ telling you the truth. It's not my fault that you're a dense, obstinate, idiotic fucking bastard!" Gromov shouted right back, refusing to be intimidated. Snippy hissed through his teeth in frustration. Oh, but the engineer was making it _so hard_ to keep calm. He resolutely refused to look at the engineer. Every time he did, the urge to clamp his hands around the man's neck grew stronger.

"Yeah, call me names, see if I fucking care. But don't _lie to me_, all right? I can tell when you're hiding something!"

"Like hell! I'm telling the truth! You just refuse to _believe me_!"

"I know why you really want to learn," Snippy said in a dangerously steely voice. He'd had a burst of sudden understanding as to Gromov's intentions, and it was the conclusion he really hoped he wouldn't arrive at. "I'm telling you that it's not a good idea. Gromov, I'm _warning _you -"

"You don't know _why_. You don't know _anything! _Why the hell would you think you -"

"- this is _not _going to make your nightmares stop."

Snippy turned just in time to see Gromov's coppery eyes open wide. In half a second, a thousand shifting emotions of shock, panic, confusion, shame, pain, fear, all crossed his face.

"I'm not having nightmares," the engineer said automatically, a weak and obvious lie, and dropped leadenly back into his seat at the table and buried his head in his arms. The sniper shook his head and righted his chair to sit across from his companion. "You're wrong."

"You're saying I can't tell when someone's not sleeping well?" Snippy snorted. "It's practically my area of expertise, Gromov."

The engineer already looked like he wanted to disappear, so Snippy refrained from mentioning how recently he'd been awoken in the middle of the night by screams from the next room over, or mentioning how tired the engineer looked or pointing out how he looked like he was constantly on the verge of nodding off during the day but was too afraid of the depths of his own mind to actually fall sleep.

_Been there, done that_, the sniper thought.

"Yeah, fine," Gromov mumbled almost inaudibly. "I've been having nightmares. But it's no big deal."

Snippy looked almost in pity at the man sitting across from him. He knew how much it hurt the engineer's pride to admit even that little fact. He knew Gromov hated seeming weak, hated when he wasn't perfect, hated when people worried about him. The sniper normally just let the engineer cover it up with his usual infuriating arrogance, but he couldn't leave him to brush this one off like it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing. It was Gromov was asking for help the only way he knew how.

"No, it _is_ a big deal. I'm telling you, Gromov, if you're looking for a way to sleep well at night, learning to kill isn't one of them."

"No," the engineer said, growing a little bolder, like he'd figured this out for himself a long time ago, "it's not that. If I learn, then I can finally stand up to what scares me. I won't feel so ... helpless."

The sniper shook his head.

"It doesn't work that way," he said gently. "This is not going to help you take back control of anything. Least of all your own mind. It'll just make everything worse."

"I don't care, all right? I don't care. It _will_ work. I'll _make_ it work," the engineer said decisively. He took a deep breath, let it out sharply, and he stood again, picking his gun up. "You just watch. Just wait and see."

_You're deluding yourself,_ the sniper wanted to say. _I've made this mistake once already. Stop now, Gromov, or you're just going to cause yourself more pain. I can help you._

But Gromov had already disappeared from the kitchen.

Minutes later, the sound of gunshots and thunder once again rang out over the cold and empty wastelands.

* * *

UHH ok. Onward and upward!


End file.
